Financial Risk

We analyze the consumption of life and non-life insurance across 103 Italian provinces in 1996-2002. We assess the determinants of insurance consumption, in the light of the empirical literature and the distinctive fea- tures of our country, trying to explain the underdevelopment of the South as regards this sector. Among the benefits of using sub-regional data on insurance expenditure, one

Individual transferable quotas (ITQs) in multispecies fisheries create incentives for fishermen to avoid bycatch of species for which quota is scarce. However, when bycatch is highly uncertain, individual quota demand and prices may be volatile creating substantial financial risk for fishermen. The US Pacific Groundfish fishery recently introduced an ITQ system with low quotas for several overfished species with highly uncertain bycatch rates. Some fishery participants formed risk pools where bycatch quota is pooled and available to all pool members. Risk pools can reduce financial risk and transactions costs for individuals, but they also create moral hazard and adverse selection problems. We present an empirical analysis of bycatch risk that informs several issues of risk pool design including which bycatch species to include, pools size, and how to evaluate and mitigate adverse selection and moral hazard problems.

The profitability of rearing the rheophilic cyprinid fish species asp, Aspius aspius (L.), and ide, Leuciscus idus (L.), in two independent closed recirculating systems was evaluated. The fish were fed live Artemia nauplii exclusively. The rearing of both species was profitable and the financial risk was relatively low. From the point of view of profitability, the purchase price of stocking material was the most significant factor. The price of juvenile asp was 2.5 times higher than that of ide. Rearing larval asp was the most profitable venture. systems is improving continually rendering this method an increasingly serious alternative especially for rearing the youngest varieties of stocking material.

This study examined the socio-economic and geographic differences in illness occurrence and levels of expenditures in South Eastern Nigeria, together with policymaker and healthcare provider views on how to alleviate the financial burdens placed on the ...

The purpose of this paper is to determine those factors that influence the adoption of internet banking services in Tunisia. A theoretical model is provided that conceptualizes and links different factors influencing the adoption of internet banking. A total of 253 respondents in Tunisia were sampled for responding: 95 were internet bank users, 158 were internet bank non users. Factor analyses and regression technique are employed to study the relationship. The results of the model tested clearly that use of internet banking in Tunisia is influenced most strongly by convenience, risk, security and prior internet knowledge. Only information on online banking did not affect intention to use internet banking service in Tunisia. The results also propose that demographic factors impact significantly internet banking behaviour, specifically, occupation and instruction. Finally, this paper suggests that an understanding the factors affecting intention to use internet banking is very important to the practitioners who plan and promote new forms of banking in the current competitive market.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency has considered several treatment options for flow-through systems in its Effluent Limitation Guidelines rulemaking effort on aquaculture. However, the economic effects of treating effluents can impose high costs on aquaculture businesses, depending upon the treatment option selected. Survey data from trout farmers in North Carolina and Idaho were used to develop enterprise budgets, a spreadsheet-based risk analysis, and mathematical programming models of medium-sized trout farms in North Carolina (68,182 kg/yr) and Idaho (90,909 kg/yr) and large trout farms in Idaho (1,136,364 kg/yr). These analyses were used to examine the effect of imposing five different effluent treatment options on the net returns of farms raising trout in raceways. Budget analyses showed that the trout farm scenarios considered were generally profitable, although the medium-sized farms exhibited low levels of profitability. All five proposed effluent treatment options resulted in negative net returns for the medium-sized farms in both North Carolina and Idaho. The large farm scenario showed positive net returns after adding costs associated with the affluent treatment options considered, but the risk of generating positive net returns decreased from 82-84% to 10-11%. Thus, financial risk increased considerably when treatment www.elsevier.com/locate/aqua-online Aquacultural Engineering 32 (2005) 303-323 options were imposed. The mixed-integer mathematical programming model demonstrated sensitivities to the level of credit reserves both for operating and investment capital. The effluent treatment options imposed on the models were not economically feasible at the levels of capital available on most trout farms. Subsequent runs of the model used investment capital requirements of treatment options at 50% of the original estimates. The models showed that imposing effluent treatment options forced farms to substitute production units for treatment facilities. This results from a combination of: 1) the additional capital requirements of the treatment options; 2) limited availability of credit reserves; and 3) competing uses for land in trout farming areas that put upward pressure on land prices. Many of the proposed treatment options included substantial investment capital requirements that increased annual fixed costs. Limited availability of investment capital prevented the farm expansion that would be needed to spread the increased fixed costs; hence, the models were forced to remove units from production to meet treatment constraints. Net returns decreased because farms were forced to operate at inefficient levels. #