Workers' compensation insurance presents a set of institutional charac teristics that are unique. For every other form of insurance, both the insurer and the coverage provided under the policy are completely controlled either by the federal or a state government, or by an arrangement between the insured and a property-casualty insurer. Unemployment insurance, Social Security, and bank-deposit insurance are examples for which a legis lative body sets the benefits. and a government agency prescribes the in surance premium. By contrast, the coverage and premiums for automobile, homeowners, and...

The original impetus for this research was provided several years ago by a request to assist Counsel for Fidelity Management and Research Corporation in analyzing the mutual fund industry, with particular emphasis on money market mutual funds. We were asked to focus our efforts on the mechanism by which the advisory fees of mutual funds are determined. This request arose out of litigation that challenged the level of advisory fees charged to the shareholders of the Fidelity Cash Reserve Fund. Subsequently, we were asked to provide similar assistance to Counsel for T. Rowe Price Associates...

Gallium Arsenide technology has come of age. GaAs integrated circuits are available today as gate arrays with an operating speed in excess of one Gigabits per second. Special purpose GaAs circuits are used in optical fiber digital communications systems for the purpose of regeneration, multiplexing and switching of the optical signals. As advances in fabrication and packaging techniques are made, the operat ing speed will further increase and the cost of production will reach a point where large scale application of GaAs circuits will be economical in these and other systems where speed is...

Very large scale integration (VLSI) technologies are now maturing with a current emphasis toward submicron structures and sophisticated applications combining digital as well as analog circuits on a single chip. Abundant examples are found on today's advanced systems for telecom munications, robotics, automotive electronics, image processing, intelli gent sensors, etc .. Exciting new applications are being unveiled in the field of neural computing where the massive use of analog/digital VLSI technologies will have a significant impact. To match such a fast technological trend towards single...