A baffling divorce on Long Island, a mysterious disease in Malaysia and a preeminent Chinese scientist with ties to Taiwan and a story to tell, collide in an explosive and timely tale of scientific and political espionage. Moving between New York, China and Taiwan, Immortal in Splashed Ink is an international thriller about ordinary people drawn into a global plot involving powerful players and worldwide repercussions. NYU science professor Jack Cedar is stunned to be accused of planning to kidnap his own children and served with a restraining order that bars him from leaving the country to deliver an important lecture to a prestigious international science federation. He furiously confronts Aruba Jones, the experienced and savvy divorce lawyer who prepared the legal papers, claiming that he has never been married, has no children and has never even heard of Aimee Cedar, the enigmatic woman claiming to be his wife. When Aimee vanishes, and Jack and Aruba become suspects in a deadly terrorist incident, the unlikely pair are thrown together in a desperate effort to unravel the bizarre chain of events that has ensnared them. Across the world, renowned Chinese scientist and high-ranking Communist Party member, Dr. Pao Den Chin, identifies scientific evidence of immense global importance. When the Communist Party prohibits investigation of his groundbreaking discovery and uses brutal methods to eradicate all evidence of it, the melancholy and introspective Den Chin conceives a plan to ensure that his research will continue.

The jargon of economics and finance contains numerous colorful terms for market-asset prices at odds with any reasonable economic explanation. Examples include "bubble," "tulipmania," "chain letter," "Ponzi scheme," "panic," "crash," "herding," and "irrational exuberance." Although such a term suggests that an event is inexplicably crowd-driven, what it really means, claims Peter Garber, is that we have grasped a near-empty explanation rather than expend the effort to understand the event. In this book Garber offers market-fundamental explanations for the three most famous bubbles: the Dutch Tulipmania (1634-1637), the Mississippi Bubble (1719-1720), and the closely connected South Sea Bubble (1720). He focuses most closely on the Tulipmania because it is the event that most modern observers view as clearly crazy. Comparing the pattern of price declines for initially rare eighteenth-century bulbs to that of seventeenth-century bulbs, he concludes that the extremely high prices for rare bulbs and their rapid decline reflects normal pricing behavior. In the cases of the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles, he describes the asset markets and financial manipulations involved in these episodes and casts them as market fundamentals.

The seven contributions in this book examine the potential impact of a North AmericanFree Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico on the U.S. economy.

The papers in this book are grouped into three sections: the first on price bubbles is primarily financial; the second on speculative attacks (on exchange rate regimes) is international in scope; and the third, on policy switching, is concerned with monetary policy.

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and national and international economic developments.

This paper investigates the currency reforms undertaken subsequent to the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. The reforms were motivated by the lack of coordination of monetary policy and the absence of a rule for sharing seigniorage. Because the Successor States’ reforms were not carried out simultaneously, individuals could choose where to convert their crowns based on where their real value was greatest. The cross-border flows of notes was substantial, to the detriment of Hungary which was last to reform. The Austrian and Hungarian currencies were stabilized only with the help of League of Nations financial programs.

Written and edited by American Hospital Association Resource Center staff, this book provides a clear overview of the major stakeholders in our country's health care system. The book serves as a quick introduction to American providers, payers, regulators, clinicians, and the patient population. An easy-to-use Question & Answer format, compelling facts, and pertinent data show readers how the various components of the health care system fit together. This book is an excellent guide and reference for those who want to understand the demands and challenges facing health care institutions across the land. Book jacket.

Evidence from the past three years indicates that the exchange rate between the private ECU and the official ECU Basket can deviate substantially from par. The value of the private ECU is driven by expectations that a future European Central Bank will enforce par convertibility between the private ECU and the official ECU basket of currencies. Meanwhile, no existing institutional arrangement limits the private ECU’s value in terms of the Basket. This paper addresses the question of what determines the values of the private ECU and of private ECU interest rates. We show that an anticipation of a future fixing of the private ECU’s value, together with the interest rate setting mechanism of the large-value ECU payment and clearing system, are sufficient to determine its value. The determination of the private ECU exchange rate provides the template for how to determine the value of any private composite currency, such as, for example, a private SDR.

In order to gain insight into the possible consequences of prospective payment for university hospitals, we studied 2,025 admissions to the faculty and community services of a university hospital, measuring differences in case mix, costs, and outcomes. The faculty service case mix was disproportionately weighted toward the more costly diagnoses, but even after adjustment for diagnosis-related groups (DRGs), costs were 11 percent higher on the faculty service. The differential was proportionately greater for diagnostic costs than for routine or treatment costs, and the differential was particularly large (70 percent) for patients with a predicted probability of death (DTHRISK) of .25 or greater.The in-hospital mortality rate was appreciably lower on the faculty service after adjustment for case mix and patient characteristics. The mortality differential between the two services was particularly large for patients in the high death risk category. Comparison of a matched sample of 51 pairs of admissions from the high death risk category confirmed the above results with respect to costs and in-hospital mortality, but follow-up revealed that the mortality rates were equal for the two services at nine months after discharge.