Thesis advisor: Matthew S. Rutledge / Thesis advisor: Christopher F. Baum / Social insurance programs exist in the United States to help workers maintain their standard of living across different states of the world. Examples include unemployment insurance, which aids workers through the state of being unemployed, and Social Security, which supports workers through the state of retirement. The three essays in this dissertation study how these types of social insurance programs alter the decisions workers make in the labor market. The first and third essays focus on unemployment insurance, where the first essay focuses on how different types of workers make decisions in the presence of unemployment insurance and the third essay studies how all workers respond to changes in the provision of unemployment insurance. The second essay examines how Social Security retirement income influences the decision of late-career workers to participate in the labor market. All three essays emphasize that the willingness of workers to pursue a job in the labor market relies upon the social insurance available to them outside of employment. Theoretical models of optimal unemployment insurance predict that the job search and savings behavior of unemployed workers will partially be determined by how long a worker expects to remain unemployed. Empirical evidence suggests, however, that workers often underestimate the duration of their unemployment spell. These biased beliefs about the duration of unemployment among unemployed workers should therefore affect their job search and savings behavior. To date, no reliable data have been used to empirically analyze to what degree biased beliefs would change the behavior of unemployment workers. In the first essay, titled 'Biased Beliefs and Job Search: Implications for Optimal Unemployment Insurance,' I use a novel dataset, the Survey of Unemployed Workers in New Jersey, to evaluate how biased beliefs vary across unemployed workers and how they influence the behavior of those workers. I find that overly-optimistic unemployed workers underestimate the duration of their unemployment, leading them to spend 26 percent less time searching for a job each week than those with a pessimistic bias. I also find that overly-optimistic unemployed workers have over $8,500 less saved at any given point during an unemployment spell. These results suggest that unemployed workers with an optimistic bias would benefit from an information "nudge" that encourages increased search effort and could lead to faster reemployment. The first essay demonstrates how workers respond to the presence of social insurance when they are still focused on rejoining the labor market. That is, it provides evidence on the intensive margin. However, it does not say anything about how it would influence a worker's desire to participate in the labor market at all, on the extensive margin. In the second essay, 'Do Late-Career Wages Boost Social Security More for Women than Men?,' Matthew Rutledge and I estimate the incentives for older workers to continue working during their retirement-age years when they could be collecting Social Security. Any worker who delays claiming Social Security receives a larger monthly benefit because of the actuarial adjustment. Some claimants - particularly women, who are more likely to take time out of the labor force early in their careers - can further increase their benefits if the extra years of work raise their career average earnings by displacing lower-earning years. This essay uses the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) linked to earnings records to quantify the impact of women's late-career earnings on Social Security benefits relative to men's. The essay finds that the average gain in Social Security retirement benefits from working one additional year raises women's monthly benefits by 8.6 percent, of which 1.6 percent is from late-career earnings. These results suggest that, especially among women, there are additional benefits to delaying claiming and further increasing the retirement age. Through both of the first two chapters, the parameters outlining the social insurance program were held constant. In reality, the rules of a social insurance program can change over time. Motivated by this possibility, my third chapter, 'The Impact of Unemployment Insurance Extensions on Worker Job-Search Behavior,' explores how reservation wages and job search effort respond to extensions of unemployment insurance. Current economic theory predicts that reservation wages should rise following an extension of potential benefit duration, while search effort should fall. Previous papers in this literature focus on the end result, which is that UI extensions result in prolonged unemployment spells. Using the Survey of Unemployed Workers in New Jersey, and the UI benefit extension in the United States in November 2009, this paper identifies the worker behaviors that lead to prolonged unemployment durations. Employing hypothesis testing and event study analysis, this study shows there are lagged, significant increases in reservation wages and decreases in search effort following the benefit extension. The results suggest that an alternative model of job search is needed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Private healthcare financing in South Africa has undergone several regulatory reforms, the most recent of which saw the enactment of the Medical Schemes Act No. 131 of 1998. The stated reforms, most especially open enrolment and community rating, were touted by the government as necessary to address the undesirable effects of adverse selection. However, it was never questioned whether in fact adverse selection is a feature of the South African medical schemes landscape. Adverse selection is found to be absent. Thus, government’s supposition that adverse selection, as a consequence of the deregulation that took place during the late 1980s and early 1990s, is responsible for the deterioration in medical scheme coverage for the elderly, unhealthy or poor is fallacious. Since the ostensible reason for the current legislation does not stand up to scrutiny, regulatory capture is offered as the plausible alternative explanation for the promulgation of the current legislation governing medical schemes business.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University. Missing page 8 in numbering only

Chan Mei-yuk, Daisy, Fung Sek-yung. / Bibliography: leaves [82]-86 / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1986

by Lam Chak-chung. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1981. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 62).

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University.

Cheung, Oi Lam Eunice. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-45). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Risk Theory --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Hybrid Numerical Scheme --- p.3 / Chapter 2 --- The Model --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1 --- Model --- p.5 / Chapter 2.2 --- Integro-Differential Equations --- p.8 / Chapter 2.3 --- Explicit Formulas and Asymptotic Properties --- p.13 / Chapter 3 --- Numerical Method --- p.16 / Chapter 3.1 --- From Integro-Differential Equations to Integral Equations --- p.17 / Chapter 3.2 --- Prom Integral Equations to Linear Equations --- p.19 / Chapter 3.3 --- Boundary Conditions --- p.20 / Chapter 3.4 --- Importance Sampling --- p.23 / Chapter 4 --- Numerical Study --- p.27 / Chapter 4.1 --- Exponential Claims with Equal Means --- p.28 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- Importance Sampling --- p.28 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- System of Linear Equations --- p.31 / Chapter 4.2 --- Exponential Claims with Unequal Means --- p.32 / Chapter 5 --- Conclusion --- p.40 / Bibliography --- p.43

Leung, Kit Hung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 47-48). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Classical Model --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Diffusion-perturbed model --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3 --- Hybrid computational scheme --- p.5 / Chapter 2 --- Integro-differential Equations --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1 --- Integro-differential equation of Chiu and Yin (2003) --- p.7 / Chapter 2.2 --- Integro-differential equations for ψs(u) and ψd(u) --- p.16 / Chapter 3 --- Numerical Method --- p.17 / Chapter 3.1 --- Trapezoidal approximation --- p.18 / Chapter 3.2 --- Boundary Conditions --- p.19 / Chapter 4 --- Importance Sampling --- p.22 / Chapter 4.1 --- Simulation Recipe --- p.25 / Chapter 4.2 --- Discussion --- p.26 / Chapter 5 --- Numerical Examples --- p.28 / Chapter 5.1 --- Probabilities of ruin: Oscillation and claim --- p.28 / Chapter 5.2 --- Comparison with the asymptotic results --- p.32 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Ruin Probability --- p.38 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Surplus before ruin --- p.40 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Deficit after ruin --- p.42 / Chapter 6 --- Conclusion --- p.45 / References --- p.47

Training is essential to the growth and economic well-being of a nation. This need for training pervades all levels of industry, from a national level where a country’s well being is enhanced by training, to each company where productivity is improved, down to the individual whose skills are enhanced and as a result improve their position in the employment marketplace. The Australian Bureau of Statistics report ‘Training and Education Experience –Australia’ (ABS 1993) indicates that training in Australia is undertaken at a significant level with some 86% of employers undertaking some form of training. This is slightly higher in the Finance industry at a little over 89%. On the job training is undertaken by 82% of employers and off the job training is used by 47% of employers. In 80% of the off the job cases these courses were conducted in a conventional manner using an instructor. The remaining 20% of cases were either self paced (14%) or instructor based (6%). These latter cases could involve Computer Based Training (CBT). The report, referred to in the last paragraph, also indicates that a significant aspect of business in Australia is that 95% of businesses have less than 20 staff. This poses significant problems in that the ability to deliver effective training is limited. With businesses as small as these their size does not permit them to carry specialist training personnel so this role falls to the senior staff. These people already have a full workload and their ability to be able to take on training duties is limited. In addition these people were employed for their technical skills, not training. It may be that their ability to fill the role of a trainer is not good and as a result the training may not be very effective. In addition, small business has difficulty in releasing staff for training, The difficulties faced by small business were recognised by the Australian National Training Authority in their 1995 report which indicated that there was a need to develop a ‘training culture’ among small business employers. The authority made a commitment to provide flexible delivery strategies. This includes Computer Based Training (CBT). CBT has existed since the 1970’s. It came on to the scene with a flourish and tended to provide ‘page turning’ programs or ‘drill and practice programs’. In limited areas this form of training became popular but its popularity waned in the 80’s. With the advent of better graphical displays, larger and faster memory, and improved programs in the 1990’s the quality of CBT today is superior to those offered in the 70’s and has greater appeal. Today, still photographs and video clips can be displayed and made interactive. Because of this CBT is making a comeback and starting to have a greater impact. The insurance industry covers a wide range of companies in Australia, these companies vary in size from companies with employees in the thousands to companies with less than five staff. While the needs of the employees of each are similar the ability of these companies to deliver the training varies significantly. Any training can be divided into two parts. Internal or on the job training and external. External training deals with those aspects that concern the industry as a whole whereas internal training affects the individual company. Internal training would deal with matters like company procedures, company products and the like. External training deals with matters such as legislation, products generally, and the like. In the insurance industry the major problem arises with the small companies. Insurance companies would tend to be large in size and able to cover their training costs but the insurance brokers who would make up, numerically, the major number of companies would have a significant number of companies that fall into the 20 staffer less category. In fact many would have a staff of less than 5. While CBT can benefit all companies it is these small companies that could benefit from it the most. This thesis examines: • The place of CBT in training, its cost and effectiveness. • The incidence of CBT in the insurance industry and how the industry determines its effectiveness. • If a program that meets an industry need is able to be produced at a realistic price?

Graduation date: 2004