Testing for the mean of the inverse gaussian distribution and adaptive estimation of parameters

This paper provides the modified likelihood ratio criterion for testing whether the mean of the inverse Gaussian distribution can be set to unity giving rise to Standard form of the Wald distribution. Estimates of probability of correct selection has been obtained on the basis of a Monte Carlo study of 1,000 samples. Finally a set of adaptive estimators for the parameters are proposed and studied on the basis of data generated from the two distributions.     

The understudied half of undergraduates: Risky sexual behaviors among community college students

Abstract

Objective: This study examines the prevalence and risk factors associated with risky sexual behaviors in community college students. Participants: A diverse sample of 18–19-year-old community college students (N?=?264). Methods: Baseline data from an online prevention program administered in 2015. Results: Community college students in this sample disproportionately experienced sexual assault and were unlikely to test for STIs. Higher intentions to engage in risky sexual behaviors were associated with gender and sexual experience, but also with having lower intentions to communicate with a sexual partner about pregnancy and STIs, and having higher gender norm endorsement. Conclusions: Older adolescents attending community colleges may be at high risk for poor sexual health outcomes, and appropriate theory-based education should be tailored to meet the needs of these underserved students.     

Can a Sector‐Wide Approach Underpin and Advance Universal Health Coverage?

Fragmented management approach makes the provision of comprehensive health care for achieving universal health coverage very unlikely. This article aims to explore the potential contribution of a systemic approach—the sector‐wide approach (SWAp)—to achieving universal health coverage (UHC), using the Mongolian context as an example. The paper describes UHC and factors that hinder its achievement in developing countries, based on the Mongolian experience. The analysis focuses on the root factors hindering the achievement of UHC and examines how these affect system and local capacity critical for achieving UHC. Two principally different approaches, a sector‐wide (holistic) approach and a standalone project (fragmented) approach are compared in terms of their contribution to the main indicators of achieving UHC. The current stage of the Mongolian health SWAp is identified and early rewards of a SWAp are presented. The paper proposes a SWAp as a potential approach to tackle these root factors to help in achieving UHC, because it is a promising instrument that promotes a systems‐strengthening and capacity‐building approach to enable effective coordination of standalone projects in alignment with the national priorities.     

Rights Versus Morality: Online Debate About Decriminalization of Gay Sex in Singapore

This article presents a quantitative content analysis of 10,473 comments from two opposing online petitions related to the legal status of a section of the penal code in Singapore used to ban sex between men. Results indicate numerous significant differences in how the two sides discussed the law and its significance. In particular, they used different types of arguments to support their views and expressed different kinds of concerns over the potential impact of changing or maintaining the law. The patterns of language use seem to reflect distinctly different approaches to the debate and suggest the difficulty of finding common ground amid this contentious social issue, but they also reveal similarities to how Western cultures have framed the debate.     

MANAGING RISK TAKING WITH INTEREST RATE POLICY AND MACROPRUDENTIAL REGULATIONS

We develop a model in which a financial intermediary's investment in risky assets—risk taking—is excessive due to limited liability and deposit insurance, and characterize the policies that implement efficient risk taking. In the calibrated model, combining interest rate policy with state‐contingent macroprudential regulations—either capital or leverage regulation, and a tax on profits—achieves efficiency. Interest rate policy mitigates excessive risk taking by altering the return and the supply of collateralizable safe assets. In contrast to commonly used capital regulation, leverage regulation has stronger effects on risk taking and calls for higher interest rates. (JEL E44, E52, G11, G18)     

Overcoming the Fear of the “Other”: Building Trust Between British Muslims and the Wider Community

Initiatives that seek to build community trust are timely given the increasing focus on terror-related attacks and the rise in associated hate crimes as well as scrutiny of the way Muslim leadership is responding to such incidents. This paper details a novel and proactive model that aims to improve and build trust between Muslims and the wider community. The Trust Building Project was found to accomplish its two objectives. Not only was there an improvement in participant knowledge of Islam scores but there was also evidence suggesting trust had improved through engagement, understanding and through getting to know one another. Listening and learning sought to dispel myths and highlight shared morals and values. We propose that through these interactions the basis to building a more trusting society can be formed. It is unclear to what extent this could reduce incidents of hate crime and discrimination, however social change has been shown to occur where there are grass roots initiatives and suggestions are made to examine how this work can be rolled out nationally in order to address the trust deficit seen within our society today.     

A Clustering-based Test for Nonadditivity in an Unreplicated Two-way Layout

When there are several replicates available at each level combination of two factors, testing nonadditivity can be done by the usual two-way ANOVA method. However, the ANOVA method cannot be used when the experiment is unreplicated (one observation per cell of the two-way classification). Several tests have been developed to address nonadditivity in unreplicated experiments starting with Tukey's (1949 Tukey, J.W. (1949). One degree of freedom for non-additivity. Biometrics 5:232–242.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) one-degree-of-freedom test for nonadditivity. Most of them assume that the interaction term has a multiplicative form. But such tests have low power if the assumed functional form is inappropriate. This leads to tests which do not assume a specific form for the interaction term. This paper proposes a new method for testing interaction which does not assume a specific form of interaction. The proposed test has the advantage over the earlier tests that it can also be used for incomplete two-way tables. A simulation study is performed to evaluate the power of the proposed test and compare it with other well-known tests.     

Bayesian shrinkage estimators for a measure of dispersion of an inverse gaussian distribution

The Bayesian shrinkage estimation for a measure of dispersion with known mean is studied for the inverse Gaussian distribution. An optimum choice of the shrinkage factor and the properties of the proposed Bayesian shrinkage estimators are being studied. It is shown that these estimators have smaller risk than the usual estimator of the reciprocal measure of dispersion.     

Distributions of the product and the quotient from bivariates t,f and pareto distribution

This paper deals with the probability density functions of two correlated Pareto, two correlated t and two correlated F random variables.