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Examines the primary studies which have contributed to dental care research. By reviewing background information, lays a foundation for the review of the current empirical evidence, which examines the effect of dental insurance coverage on the oral health of the American population, as well as the utilization and demand for dental services. Raises questions and implications for future research and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to survey bank credit managers and analysts in Mozambique regarding their attitude toward firm diversification.

Forty-five credit managers and analysts from 23 banks in Mozambique were surveyed about their views on diversification and diversified firms. Questionnaires were used. Data were analyzed using chi-square test and binomial test.

Credit analysts and managers in Mozambique have a generally positive attitude toward diversification. This is mainly due to the coinsurance effects and stability of cash flows that diversification could provide. They, however, prefer moderately diversified to highly diversified firms and related to unrelated diversified firms. This is a puzzle, given the expectation that greater unrelated diversification is better able to provide coinsurance.

The study provides information that is useful for understanding the diversification–cost of capital relationship and could help corporate managers in making capital structure decisions.

Previous researchers have not studied the attitude of credit managers/analysts toward diversification in Mozambique using the survey approach. The study contributes to the literature on diversification and access to external finance, the diversification discount and cash holding behavior of firms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether, and to what extent, corporate diversification into related and unrelated businesses affects capital structure choices, and whether ownership structure is germane to the understanding of corporate diversification strategies and debt‐equity financing choices.

Univariate approaches include the parametric two‐sample t‐test, non‐parametric Kolmogorov‐Smirnov test and Kruskal‐Wallis rank test, and cluster analysis. Multivariate approaches include panel data regressions to identify the sign and magnitude of the effect of diversification on capital structure, after controlling for a number of industry and firm characteristics as suggested in the literature.

Corporate diversification into related or unrelated industries has opposite effects on capital structure, after controlling for ownership structure and corporate governance mechanisms. Consistent with the prediction of organizational economics, an increase in the degree of business relatedness is associated with a reduction in debt while an increase in business unrelatedness is associated with an increase in debt. In addition, there is strong evidence that government‐controlled firms use less debt financing and that government ownership weakens the positive relationship between unrelated diversification and leverage. The results are robust to different measures of capital structure.

Traditional finance literature has not been able to provide conclusive evidence on what affects corporate capital structure decisions. This paper shows that a corporate strategy perspective, with its emphasis on a managerial decision‐making process, can provide a behavioral basis for understanding capital structure choices.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that, although there are some unique features associated with mental illness, such special features do not preclude economic analysis.

As a mechanism for understanding how individual economic studies fit into the mental health sector, a conceptual framework of the components of mental health service provision is outlined. Emphasis is placed on, not simply institutional and market resources, but also on the services provided by relatives, self‐help groups, etc.

Australian data on parts of the mental health sector are employed to illustrate that some (and different) economic analyses can be undertaken in mental health. First, time‐series data on public psychiatric hospitals are employed to demonstrate trends associated with deinstitutionalisation. Other data (for Queensland alone) indicate that there are state‐based differences in the provision of such services. Second, attention is then directed to the analysis of time‐series data on private fee‐for‐service psychiatric services. Various concepts and measures from industrial economics are applied to analyse the relative size of this service industry, the pricing behaviour of the profession, the service‐mix of “the psychiatry firms” operating in Australia. In addition, the analysis also sheds some light on the distributional implications of Australia's national (and uniform) system of health funding, Medicare.

Apart from demonstrating that economic analyses can be undertaken in the difficult area of mental health, this paper indicates a number of puzzles (e.g. various regional variations within a unified profession and a uniform national funding scheme) that invite further investigation.

A disaster such as a fire, earthquake, hurricane, or flood can cause extensive damage to a library and its collection. Part of an effective disaster preparedness program is making sure your library will be able to absorb the financial risk should you need to replace or repair damaged materials. This article explores the various options for defraying the costs of a disaster, including self‐insurance, federal aid, and the different types of insurance coverage that are available.

The purpose of this study was to explore the motives (especially the agency motives) for corporate diversification from the perspective of corporate executives who make such strategic decisions and manage the diversified firms daily.

A qualitative research approach was adopted, and 12 chief executive officers (CEOs) of diversified firms in Nigeria were interviewed for their perspectives on the motives for corporate diversification.

Stewardship motives – diversification to use excess capacities in assets and resources to exploit opportunities in the market and defend against adverse environmental developments – were the most cited reasons for diversification. The relevant agency problem related to corporate diversification motive in Nigeria is the principal–principal (majority shareholder-minority shareholder) one. CEOs with substantial holdings in their firms indicated that they use diversification to reduce their investment risk and retain control of their portfolio.

The findings suggest that in corporate environments such as Nigeria that feature blockholding prominently, the corporate strategy-related agency problem that policymakers should pay greater attention to is the principal–principal conflict rather than the traditional agent–principal problem that has influenced corporate governance over the years. There is also a need to revise the dominant view that diversification is a value-destroying strategy motivated by the self-seeking behavior of managers who have little or no shares in the companies they manage.

The few studies on motives for corporate diversification that incorporated the perspectives of corporate executives did not address the agency motives of diversification. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that has done so.

This article rests on a comparative study between Turkish firms that form international corporate alliances and domestic firms in the same industry. The findings indicate that firms with foreign partners are not significantly different from domestic firms with respect to the degree of competition and turbulence in the environment, type of technology used, diversification policy, risk taking propensity and goals of top management. Resting on this finding, which allows for the control of several variables affecting the financing decision, the impact of international diversification on capital structure is investigated. The results indicate that firms which join in foreign alliances are similar to domestic firms with respect to capital structure. The research reveals that firms with foreign partners have lower performance and are younger than domestic firms. This finding is supported with the evidence for the negative relation between performance and tendency to perceive international diversification as a new source of finance. Consequently, foreign alliances seem to constitute a means for capital provision and rapid growth for the recently established and low performing firms which have limited access to external sources of financing.

The production of specialist psychiatric services in Australia reflects the “mixed” system of public and private production of health services generally. This paper, an exercise in descriptive or positive economics, is concerned only with private production, i.e. those services provided by psychiatrists operating in “private practice” on a fee‐for‐service basis. It is shown that there is a sharp distinction in Australian institutional arrangements between psychiatric services produced in‐hospital and out‐of‐hospital. The main differences relate to the general coinsurance rates applied, 75 per cent in the former case and 85 per cent in the latter case. In addition out‐of‐hospital services are subject to a “gap” safety‐net provision. Using both algebraic and geometric expositions, the central relationships between gross prices, net prices, schedule fees and subsidies/rebates are illustrated in general, and in various special cases, e.g. where a psychiatrist “direct bills” or “bulk bills” the Health Insurance Commission.

Insurance‐linked securities can benefit both issuers and investors; they supply insurance and reinsurance companies with additional risk capital at reasonable prices (with little or no credit risk), and supply excess returns to investors that are uncorrelated with the returns of other financial assets. This article explains the terminology of insurance and reinsurance, the structure of insurance‐linked securities, and provides an overview of major transactions. First, there is a discussion of how stochastic catastrophe modeling has been applied to assess the risk of natural catastrophes, including the reliability and validation of the risk models. Second, the authors compare the risk‐adjusted returns of recent securitizations on the basis of relative value. Compared with high‐yield bonds, catastrophe (“CAT”) bonds have wide spreads and very attractive Sharpe ratios. In fact, the risk‐adjusted returns on CAT bonds dominate high‐yield bonds. Furthermore, since natural catastrophe risk is essentially uncorrelated with market risk, high expected excess returns make CAT bonds high‐alpha assets. The authors illustrate this point and show that a relatively small allocation of insurance‐linked securities within a fixed income portfolio can enhance the expected return and simultaneously decrease risk, without significantly changing the skewness and kurtosis of the return distribution.

This paper aims to review the relevant literature on mergers and acquisitions in an attempt to provide a comprehensive account of what we know about mergers and which parts of the puzzle are still incomplete.

This literature review consists of three key sections. The first part of this paper summarises the literature on the cyclical nature of mergers referred to in the literature as merger waves. The second section reviews the causes and consequences of takeovers; it first reviews the causes, or drivers, of acquisitions, while focusing on the fact that acquisitions happen in waves and then reviews the consequences of takeovers, with a predominant focus on the impacts of mergers on the economic performance of acquirers. The third part of the review summarises the theories as well as previous empirical studies on determinants of announcement returns and post-acquisition performance of combined firms.

Merger activity demonstrates a wavy pattern, i.e. mergers are clustered in industries through time. The causes suggested for this fluctuating pattern include industry and economy-level shocks, mis-valuation and managerial herding. Market reaction to announcement of acquisitions is, on average, slightly negative for acquirer stocks and significantly positive for target stocks. The combined abnormal return is positive. These findings have been consistent over several decades of investigation. The prior research also identifies a number of factors that are related to performance of acquisitions. These factors are categorised and reviewed in five different groups: acquirer characteristics, target characteristics, bid characteristics, industry characteristics and macro-environment characteristics.

This review illustrates a number of issues. Prior research is heavily biased towards gains to acquirers and factors that affect these gains. It is also biased towards finding sources of value creation through mergers, despite the fact that several theories suggest that mergers can be value-destroying. In fact, value destruction is often attributed to managers’ self-interest (agency problem) and mistakes (hubris). However, the mechanisms through which mergers destroy value are rarely addressed. Aside from that, the possibility of simultaneous creation and destruction of value in acquisitions is not often considered. Finally, after several decades of investigation, a key question is not completely answered yet: “What are the sources of value in mergers and acquisitions?”