Hosts (or nodes) in the Internet often face epidemic risks such as virus and worms attack. Despite the awareness of these risks and the availability of anti-virus software, investment in security protection is still scare, hence, epidemic risk is still prevalent. Deciding whether to invest in security protection is an inter-dependent process: security investment decision made by one node can af...

Does Forced Solidarity Hamper Investment in Small and Micro Enterprises? Sharing is a norm in many societies. We present a theoretical model on the trade-off between sharing and investment which we test on data from tailors in Burkina Faso. The empirical results support the idea that there are two behavioural patterns: entrepreneurs following an ‘insurance regime’ comply with sharing norms, are...

Single Premium Deferred Annuities (SPDAs) are investment vehicles, o ered to investors by insurance companies as a means of providing income past their retirement age. They are mirror images of insurance policies. However, the propensity of individuals to shift part, or all, of their investment into di erent annuities creates substantial uncertainties for the insurance company. In this paper we...

Solvency is a primary concern for regulators of insurance companies, claims paying ability is a primary concern for policyholders, and return on investment is a primary concern for investors. These interests potentially conflict, and the decision-makers for the firm must trade off one concern versus another. Here we examine the efficiency of insurance companies via data envelopment analysis usi...

Traditional DEA models ignore the internal process of production systems and are not able to identify the cause of deficiency in efficiencies measuring. At this research, traditional DEA model and two-stage DEA model were used to measure the efficiency of Iranian private insurance companies during 2007-2009. The results indicated that the traditional DEA model is not suitable for such kind of n...