dinsdag 28 juli 2009
Médicaments : des génériques 80 % moins chers que les originaux ?
La fédération belge des fabricants de médicaments génériques veut négocier une baisse de tarifs - jusqu'à 80 % - directement avec l'Etat et l'Inami. Les mutuelles y voient surtout une manière d'éviter des mesures plus radicales envers, à l'instar des Pays-Bas où les assureurs privés ont obtenu d'importantes baisses de prix pour leurs affiliés. Lisez l'article complet dans Trends/Tendances ici.
How the Financial Crisis Affects Pensions and Insurance and Why the Impacts Matter
Summary: This paper discusses the key sources of vulnerabilities for pension plans and insurance companies in light of the global financial crisis of 2008. It also discusses how these institutional investors transit shocks to the rest of the financial sector and economy. The crisis has re-ignited the policy debate on key issues such as: 1) the need for countercyclical funding and solvency rules; 2) the tradeoffs implied in marked based valuation rules; 3) the need to protect contributors towards retirement from excessive market volatility; 4) the need to strengthen group supervision for large complex financial institutions including insurance and pensions; and 5) the need to revisit the resolution and crisis management framework for insurance and pensions. Read the complete IMF working paper here.
Do Workers' Remittances Promote Economic Growth?
Summary: Over the past decades, workers' remittances have grown to become one of the largest sources of financial flows to developing countries, often dwarfing other widely-studied sources such as private capital and official aid flows. While it is undeniable that remittances have poverty-alleviating and consumption-smoothing effects on recipient households, a key empirical question is whether they also serve to promote long-run economic growth. This study tackles this question and addresses the main shortcomings of previous empirical work, focusing on the appropriate measurement, and incorporating an instrument that is both correlated with remittances and would only be expected to affect growth through its effect on remittances. The results show that, at best, workers' remittances have no impact on economic growth. Read the complete IMF working paper here.
At your own risk
No economic theory can perform the feats its users expect of it. Economics is unlikely ever to be good at predicting the future. Too much of what happens depends on what people expect to happen.
Read the FT article here.
Eurofound: Measures to tackle undeclared work in the European Union
This overview report and the accompanying knowledge bank represent an important first step in producing a comprehensive learning hub, where social partners can pool and share knowledge on how to tackle undeclared work, review evaluations of policy initiatives and explore their feasibility and transferability to other sectors and areas. It is hoped that having identified the gaps in understanding in this database, a more proactive and concerted effort can now be taken to address these shortcomings. If pursued, this database has the potential to become the prime global site for pooling expertise on the fight against undeclared work.
Read the complete report here.
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