D Peric, Thomas Bocek, Fabio Victora Hecht, D Hausheer, Burkhard Stiller, The design and evaluation of a distributed reliable file system, In: International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies, IEEE Computer Society, Higashi Hiroshima, Japan, 2009-12-08. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
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 Konstantin Beck, Urs Käser, Maria Trottmann, Stefan Von Rotz, Efficiency thanks to Managed Care? - evidence from Switzerland, In: The Fourth International Jerusalem Conference on Health Policy. Improving Health and Healthcare, 2009-12-08. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
Switzerland introduced managed care options in its social health insurance market in order to contain health care expenditures (HCE). These capitated Managed Care plans reduce costs through gatekeeping, internal guidelines, promoting generic substitution etc. Given the cost benefits of about 62%, the crucial question for both health insurers and the legislator is whether MC plans enhance efficiency or benefit from self-selection. Up to now, only one paper by Lehmann and Zweifel has analysed this question by applying Swiss data (and appropriate econometric tools). Their breakdown of the 62% cost benefit was 40% efficiency gains and 22% selection effect.
Our research applied a matching technique to estimate the efficiency gains. All 55,165 MC pol-icy holders of a given fund, across 18 different MC plans, formed the starting point. The sam-ple was divided into 442 risk classes according to demographics, place of residence, chronic conditions etc. Out of 900,000 insured within the same fund who did not choose MC plans but had identical coverage and free access to providers, we drew “twin samples” of identical size and risk structure as the MC plans (according to the 442 risk classes) and calculated their aver-age HCE. We re-sampled up to 60 times per plan and calculated the average HCE of the 60 averages. This average of averages was compared with the simple average of HCE in the MC plan, yielding the efficiency gain. The same average of averages compared with the simple average of all non-MC policy holders living in the same area indicates the selection effect. All calculations were done separately for each MC plan and two different years (2006 and 2007).
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Our approach reveals efficiency gains of only 8.7% (across all plans) and selection effects of about 52%. However, the different plans vary substantially, and our analysis also identifies a best practice plan with 18.5% efficiency gains. The goal of this study was also to inspire those plans below the benchmark to copy the best practice tools of the leading MC plans. |
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Dana Damian, Markus Cadonau, Konstantinos Dermitzakis, Alejandro Hernandez Arieta, Grip Stabilization of a Robot Hand through a Ridged Artificial Skin, In: Workshop on Tactile Sensing, IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoids., Paris, France, December 2009. (Conference or Workshop Paper)
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Burkhard Stiller, Economic Traffic Management (ETM): An Approach to Underlay/Overlay Mappings , In: 1st International Workshop on Network Operation Cost Modeling. 2009. (Conference Presentation)
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Burkhard Stiller, A Discussion of Socio-economic Management and Incentives for the Future Internet, In: 2nd IEEE Workshop on the Network of the Future (2nd FutureNet). 2009. (Conference Presentation)
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Andreas Scherer, Guido Palazzo, The New Political Role of Business in a Globalized World – A Paradigm Shift in CSR and its Implications for the Firm, Governance, and Democracy, In: Academy of International Business (AIB) Research Frontiers Conference. 2009. (Conference Presentation)
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Christoph Bischofberger, Kostenrechnung zur Pfandbesicherung von börsennotierten strukturierten Produkten, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2009. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Philipp Kramer, Realoptionen aus Portfoliosicht - Eine Analyse auf der Ebene der Geschäftsprozesse, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2009. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Andreas Schuler, Die Unternehmenssteuerreform III - Auswirkungen auf den Steuerstreit mit der EU und den Standort Schweiz, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2009. (Bachelor's Thesis)
Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der dritten Unternehmenssteuerreform der Schweiz. Auf die Klärung der Frage, wie die Unternehmenssteuerreform im Vergleich zu den zwei vorange-gangenen Reformen steht, folgt eine Analyse des Steuerstreits zwischen der Schweiz und der EU und die sich daraus ergebenden Folgen für den Steuerstandort Schweiz. Der letzte Teil befasst sich mit den geplanten Kernpunkten der dritten Reform, inwiefern sie zur Schlichtung des Steuerstreits und der Verbesserung des Standorts beiträgt und was für Punkte nach der Reform auf die Steuerlandschaft der Schweiz zukommen wird. |
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Natalia Eisele, Reputation Risk as a Source of Volatility, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2009. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Marc Greuter, Structured Finance Vehicles in Microfinance-Investment Banking für sozial Benachteiligte, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2009. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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David Pine, The Microfinance Sector in Bangladesh: Innovation or Stagnation, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2009. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Lennard Leverkus, Small Enterprise Lending in Emerging Markets, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2009. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Antonia Meyer, Der Einsatz von Finanzierungsgesellschaften aus Konzernsteuersicht, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2009. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Christian Rosser, Weber, Wilson, and Hegel: Theories of Modern Bureaucracy, Public Administration Review, Vol. 69 (6), 2009. (Journal Article)
Convergence between Woodrow Wilson's and Max Weber's thought, as well as their differences with regard to the politics–administration dichotomy, can be ascribed to the Hegelian tradition of public administrative theory. On the one hand, Wilson was strongly influenced by Georg W. F. Hegel. On the other hand, there is an empirical connection between Hegel and Weber. Both shared a consciousness of the German bureaucratic tradition based on Hegel's Philosophy of Right. These insights have important methodological and theoretical implications for the contemporary comparative study of public administration |
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David Hausheer, Bandwidth on Demand: Challenges and Opportunities, In: IEEE GLOBECOM ACCESS '09. 2009. (Conference Presentation)
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Ulrike Malmendier, Law and Finance "at the Origin", Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 47 (4), 2009. (Journal Article)
What are the key determinants of financial development and growth? A large literature debates the relative importance of countries' legal and political environment. In this paper, I present evidence from ancient Rome, where an early form of shareholder company, the societas publicanorum, developed. I show that the societas publicanorum flourished in a legally underdeveloped but politically supportive environment (Roman Republic) and disappeared when Roman law reached its height of legal sophistication but the political environment grew less supportive (Roman Empire). In the Roman case, legal development appears to have mattered little as long as the law as practiced was flexible and adapted to economic needs. The "law as practiced," in turn, reflected prevalent political interests. After discussing parallels in more recent history, I provide a brief overview of the literature on law and finance and on politics and finance. The historical evidence suggests that legal systems may be less of a technological constraint for growth than previously thought -- at least "at the origin." (JEL D72, K10, N23, N43) |
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Angelo Ranaldo, Segmentation and time-of-day patterns in foreign exchange markets, Journal of Banking and Finance, Vol. 33 (12), 2009. (Journal Article)
This paper sheds light on a puzzling pattern in spot foreign exchange markets: domestic currencies appreciate (depreciate) systematically during foreign (domestic) working hours. This phenomenon spans many years and several exchange rates, and overrides calendar effects. We argue that it is mainly due to liquidity and inventory patterns that emerge from the combination of two factors: domestic agents tend to be net buyers of foreign currency and to trade mostly in their country's working hours. The prevalence of domestic (foreign) traders demanding the counterpart currency during domestic (foreign) working hours implies sell-price (buy-price) pressure on the domestic currency during domestic (foreign) working hours. |
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A Pras, R Sadre, A Sperotto, T Fioreze, D Hausheer, J Schönwälder, Using NetFlow/IPFIX for Network Management, Journal of Network and Systems Management, Vol. 17 (4), 2009. (Journal Article)
To exchange experiences with, and to discuss ideas on the usage of NetFlow/IPFIX in network management, the IRTF/NMRG, together with the European EMANICS Network of Excellence, organized a one-day workshop in October 2008. This paper presents a report of that meeting. |
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Beat Fluri, Michael Würsch, Emanuel Giger, H C Gall, Analyzing the co-evolution of comments and source code, Software Quality Journal, Vol. 17 (4), 2009. (Journal Article)
Source code comments are a valuable instrument to preserve design decisions and to communicate the intent of the code to programmers and maintainers. Nevertheless, commenting source code and keeping them up-to-date is often neglected for reasons of time or programmer’s obliviousness. In this paper, we investigate the question whether developers comment their code and to which extent they add comments or adapt them when they evolve the code. We present an approach to associate comments with source code entities to track their co-evolution over multiple versions. A set of heuristics are used to decide whether a comment is associated to its preceding or its succeeding source code entity. We analyzed the co-evolution of code and comments in eight different open source and closed source software systems. We found with statistical significance that (1) the relative amount of comments and source code grows at about the same rate; (2) the type of a source code entity, such as a method declaration or an if-statement, has a significant influence on whether or not it gets commented; (3) in six out of the eight systems, code and comments co-evolve in 90 percent of the cases; and (4) surprisingly, API changes and comments do not co-evolve but they are re-documented in a later revision. As a result, our approach enables a quantitative assessment of the commenting process in a software system. We can, therefore, leverage the results to provide feedback during development to increase the awareness when to add comments or when to adapt comments because of source code changes. |
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