Using a field experiment in a 401(k) plan, we measure the effect of disseminating information about peer behavior on savings. Low-saving employees received simplified plan enrollment or contribution increase forms. A randomized subset of forms stated the fraction of age-matched coworkers participating in the plan or age-matched participants contributing at least 6% of pay to the plan. We docume...

BACKGROUND Phase II cancer studies are undertaken to assess the activity of a new drug or a new treatment regimen. Activity is sometimes defined in terms of a survival probability, a binary outcome such as one-year survival that is derived from a time-to-event variable. Phase II studies are usually designed with an interim analysis so they can be stopped if early results are disappointing. Most...

Values of travel time savings are often used in cost-benefit analysis of transport projects and policies, and also to compute generalised travel costs. There has been considerable debate as to whether different research methods (e.g. stated versus revealed preference) will lead to different values of travel time savings, and which segmentations (e.g. by income or mode) are most important to cap...

A structural intervention designed to reduce unnecessary chlamydia screening among older women resulted in a 24.4% reduction in test volume and an associated cost savings of nearly $40,000.

The precautionary savings model predicts that households accumulate wealth to self-insure against unexpected declines in future income and unforeseen expenditures. The goals of this study are twofold. First, we investigate whether the near-elderly who face higher health risks save more. Second, we examine the factors that contribute to health risks that the near-elderly face. We use data from t...

This study investigates the effect of horizontal acquisitions on target firms in China’s context. We examine how competitive and organizational similarity jointly affect cost savings, revenue growth and profitability improvement at the target in horizontal acquisitions. Using a dataset containing information on acquired firms in China’s beer industry, we find that the way in which competitive s...

In the last decade, a large body of literature has been developed to explain the universal features of inequality in terms of income and wealth. By now, it is established that the distributions of income and wealth in various economies show a number of statistical regularities. There are several models to explain such static features of inequality in an unifying framework and the kinetic exchan...

TAX PROPOSALS: Currently, the combination of worker and employer contributions in a defined contribution plan is capped by the federal tax code at the lesser of $49,000 per year or 100 percent of a worker's compensation (participants over age 50 can make additional "catch-up" contributions). As part of the effort to lower the federal deficit and reduce federal "tax expenditures," two major refo...

The Brundtland Report suggested that there are close causal links between environmental change and poverty. However, the empirical evidence of the effects of poverty on the use made of environmental assets or natural capital is ambiguous. This paper focuses on the relation between poverty and the relative importance of natural and produced capital. Poverty affects stocks of natural and produced...