Strayer Dealing with Risk, Asymmetric Information and Incentives The assistance with assignment would like to assess risk with Health Care industry – Kaiser or Blue Cross. No plagarism, please. I attached documents as a guide.ThanksCynthia WEEK 9 ASSIGNMENT
Dealing with Risk, Asymmetric
Information, and Incentives
INTRODUCTION
Choice of a company
Continue research on Southwest Airlines, or
Select another company, or
Select the company you work for
Size of paper
Six to eight (68) pages
QUESTION 1
Evaluate a companys recent (within the last year)
actions dealing with risk and uncertainty. (10 %)
Difference between risk and uncertainty
Risk is how we characterize uncertainty about values that vary.
Risk is modeled using random variables multiplied by their
probabilities.
Uncertainty refers to the distribution of the random variables.
Which probabilities should be assigned to the various values
the random variables can take?
QUESTION 1
Evaluate a companys recent (within the last year) actions
dealing with risk and uncertainty. (10 %)
When youre uncertain about the costs or bene?ts of a decision,
replace numbers with random variables and compute expected costs
and benefits.
Analyze common types of uncertainty and risk your company faces.
For example:
Uncertainty in pricing
Uncertainty in dealing with suppliers and distributers
QUESTION 2
Offer advice for improving risk management. (15 %)
By modeling uncertainty, you can:
Learn to make better decisions
Identify the source(s) of risk in a decisions
Compute the value of collecting more information.
Difference-in-difference estimators are a good way to gather information
about the bene?ts and costs of a decision.
The ?rst difference is before versus after the decision or event.
The second difference is the difference between a control and an
experimental group.
If you are facing a decision in which one of your alternatives would work
well in one state of the world, and you are uncertain about which state of
the world you are in, think about how to minimize expected error costs.
QUESTION 2
Offer advice for improving risk management. (15 %)
Uncertainty is unavoidable. To cope with uncertainty, gather more or better
information.
Best Buy has used dispersed sets of non-experts to predict future
variables, such as a holiday sales rate.
Google uses internal prediction markets to generate demand and usage
forecasting.
The US Marines advise:
Because we can never eliminate uncertainty, we must learn to fight
effectively despite it. We can do this by developing simple, flexible plans;
planning for likely contingencies; developing standing operating
procedures; and fostering initiative among subordinates.
QUESTION 3
Examine an adverse selection problem your company is
facing and recommend how it should minimize its negative
impact on transactions. (15 %)
Define adverse selection
Adverse selection is a problem that arises from information asymmetryanticipate it,
and, if you can, ?gure out how to consummate the unconsummated wealth-creating
transaction (for example, how to make low-risk customers pay for health insurance).
Screening is an uninformed partys effort to learn the information that the
more informed party has.
Signaling is an informed partys effort to communicate her information to the
less informed party.
QUESTION 3
Examine an adverse selection problem your company is
facing and recommend how it should minimize its
negative impact on transactions. (15 %)
Lessons
Anticipate adverse selection and protect yourself against it.
Using screening or signaling helps overcome the adverse selection problem so
that low-risk individuals can be transacted with profitably.
Gather enough information to distinguish high-risk from low-risk
consumers.
Direct and indirect methods
Information may be gathered indirectly by offering consumers a menu of choices,
and consumers reveal information about their risks by the choices they make.
QUESTION 4
Determine the ways your company is dealing with the moral
hazard problem and suggest best practices used in the
industry to deal with it. (15 %)
Moral hazard refers to the reduced incentive to exercise care once
you purchase insurance.
What is the difference between adverse selection and moral hazard?
Adverse selection arises from hidden information about the type
of individual youre dealing with.
Moral hazard arises from hidden actions.
The cost of managing both problems can be reduced by reducing
uncertainty (gathering more information).
QUESTION 4
Determine the ways your company is dealing with the
moral hazard problem and suggest best practices used in
the industry to deal with it. (15 %)
Solutions to the problem of moral hazard center on efforts to
eliminate the information asymmetry
monitoring
changing the incentives
QUESTION 4
Determine the ways your company is dealing with the
moral hazard problem and suggest best practices used in
the industry to deal with it. (15 %)
Example: Moral hazard in lending.
This is a problem for both the lender and the borrower. If the bank anticipates moral hazard they
will be less willing to lend, or demand a higher interest rate.
This incentive con?ict is only made worse when the borrower can put other peoples money at risk.
Borrowers take bigger risks with other peoples money than they would with their own.
To control this, lenders must ?nd ways to better align the incentives of borrowers with the goals of
lenders.
Banks sometimes do this by requiring borrowers to put some of their own money at risk.
This is why banks are much more willing to lend to borrowers who put a great deal of their own
money at risk, but it also leads to the complaint that banks lend money only to those who dont
need it.
QUESTION 5
Identify a principal-agent problem in your company and
evaluate the tools it uses to align incentives and improve
profitability. (15 %)
Principals want agents to work for their best interests, but agents typically
have different goals than do principals. This is called incentive con?ict.
In a well-run organization, decision makers have
1) the information necessary to make good decisions and
2) the incentive to do so.
If you decentralize decision-making authority, you should strengthen incentive
compensation schemes.
If you centralize decision-making authority, you should make sure to transfer
specific knowledge (information) to the decision makers.
QUESTION 5
Identify a principal-agent problem in your company and
evaluate the tools it uses to align incentives and improve
profitability. (15 %)
To analyze principalagent con?icts, focus on three questions:
Who is making the bad decisions?
Does the employee have enough information to make good decisions?
Does the employee have the incentive (performance evaluation + reward system) to
make good decisions?
Alternatives for controlling principalagent con?icts center on one of the
following:
Reassigning decision rights (to someone with better incentives or information)
Transferring information
Changing incentives (performance evaluation and reward system)
QUESTION 6
Examine the organizational structure of your company and
suggests ways it can be changed to improve the overall
profitability. (20 %)
Organizational options
Functional (U-form): A functionally organized ?rm is one in which
various divisions perform separate tasks, such as production and
sales.
M-Form: An M-form ?rm is one whose divisions perform all the
tasks necessary to serve customers of a particular product or in a
particular region.
QUESTION 6
Examine the organizational structure of your company and
suggests ways it can be changed to improve the overall
profitability. (20 %)
Companies with functional divisions share functional expertise within a
division and can more easily evaluate and reward division employees.
However, change is costly, and senior management must coordinate the
activities of the various divisions to ensure they work towards a common
goal.
Process teams are built around a multi-function task and are evaluated based
on the success of the task.
QUESTION 6
Examine the organizational structure of your company and
suggests ways it can be changed to improve the overall
profitability. (20 %)
Three possible solutions for incentive conflicts
Change the division that does the decision making,
Change the flow of information, or
Change a divisions evaluation and compensation schemes
Profit center
The benefit of a profit center is that they are easy to evaluate (and manage); the cost is
that they are concerned only with their own division profit.
A cost center
It is rewarded for reducing the cost of producing a specified output.
You can get rid of the conflict by turning one division into a cost center.
QUESTION 6
Examine the organizational structure of your company and
suggests ways it can be changed to improve the overall
profitability. (20 %)
In a multi-divisional company, transactions between divisions can create
incentive conflicts.
To understand the source of conflicts that arise between divisions, personify
the divisions and consider each to be a rational actor. Then ask the same
three questions
1) Which division is making the bad decision?
2) Does the division have enough info. to make a good decision
3) Does it have the incentive to do so?
The problems of corporate budgeting and how to fix it
ACADEMIC RESOURCES
Use at least five (5) quality academic resources in this
assignment.
5 %
Note: One of your references should have been published
within the last 6 months.
Note: Wikipedia does not qualify as an academic resource.
FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS
Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size
12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and
references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check
with your professor for any additional instructions.
Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment,
the students name, the professors name, the course title,
and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not
included in the required assignment page length.
5 %
Assignment: Dealing with Risk, Asymmetric Information, and Incentives
Due Week 9 and worth 310 points
Earlier in the quarter we discussed Southwest Airlines use of game theory to create new strategy.
Continue to research Southwest Airlines or a company of your choice and write a six to eight (6-8)
page paper in which you:
1. Evaluate a companys recent (with in the last year) actions dealing with risk and uncertainty.
2. Offer advice for improving risk management.
3. Examine an adverse selection problem your company is facing and recommend how it should
minimize its negative impact on transactions.
4. Determine the ways your company is dealing with the moral hazard problem and suggest best
practices used in the industry to deal with it.
5. Identify a principal-agent problem in your company and evaluate the tools it uses to align
incentives and improve profitability.
6. Examine the organizational structure of your company and suggests ways it can be changed to
improve the overall profitability.
7. Use the online library at https://research.strayer.edu to find at least five (5) quality academic
resources in this assignment. Note: One of your references regarding your should have been
published within the last 6 months. Note: Wikipedia does not qualify as an academic resource.
Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:
Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all
sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your
professor for any additional instructions.
Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the students name, the professors
name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in
the required assignment page length.
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