Cooperation between organisms can often be understood, like trade between merchants, as a mutually beneficial exchange of services, resources or other 'commodities'. Mutual benefits alone, however, are not sufficient to explain the evolution of trade-based cooperation. First, organisms may reject a particular trade if another partner offers a better deal. Second, while human trade often entails...

This article examines the differences in mortality measured health status between the Medicare Advantage (MA) program and Fee-for-Service (FFS) program from 1999 to 2007. At the national level, differences in mortality rates were associated with MA market share. In some counties, enrollees in the MA program were 40% less likely to die than their peers in the FFS program, but in other counties, ...

Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollment has changed dramatically in 2011 as enrollment has shifted from private fee-for-service (PFFS) plans into preferred provider organization (PPO) plans. PFFS plans dominated the growth of the rural MA market from 2005 to 2010; however, a significant number of PFFS plans have left the market due to legislative changes that required plans to provide protections fo...

This Perspective from The Boston Consulting Group’s Strategy Institute is the third in a series on the future of strategy. The preceding articles introduced six new sources of advantage and examined the central role of adaptive advantage in today’s turbulent environment.1 This article focuses on signal advantage—the ability to rapidly capture, interpret, and act upon signals from an environment...