Flexibility,endogenous risk,and the protection premium

We introduce two types of protection premia. The unconstrained protection premium, ^u, is the individual's willingness to pay for certain protection efficiency given flexibility to adjust optimally the investment in protection. The constrained protection premium, ^c, measures willingness to pay for certain protection efficiency given no flexibility to adjust the investment in protection. ^u depends on tastes and wealth as well as protection technology whereas ^c depends only on technology. We show that ^c cannot exceed ^u and develop necessary conditions for ^c=^u. Optimal protection for an individual with decision flexibility may be larger or smaller than that desired under no flexibility.Journal Paper No. J-15504 of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Ames, Iowa. Project No. 3048.     

Predatory Doctoral Programs: Warnings for Social Workers

Many MSW-level social workers make the decision to earn a doctoral degree in social work or a related field. A large number of so-called predatory doctoral programs lack rigor or much academic substance and are ultimately of little value in advancing one’s career. This article describes the characteristics of legitimate social work doctoral programs, and offers some warning signs associated with predatory doctoral programs. It is hoped that MSWs seeking the doctorate will avoid pursuing questionable doctoral degrees and opt to earn the doctorate from a reputable institution. Our Code of Ethics states that social workers should not claim credentials or qualifications they are not entitled to, and acquiring and using a bogus doctoral degree violates this standard.     

Identification of technical analysis patterns with smoothing splines for bitcoin prices

ABSTRACT

This research studies automatic price pattern search procedure for bitcoin cryptocurrency based on 1-min price data. To achieve this, search algorithm is proposed based on nonparametric regression method of smoothing splines. We investigate some well-known technical analysis patterns and construct algorithmic trading strategy to evaluate the effectiveness of the patterns. We found that method of smoothing splines for identifying the technical analysis patterns and that strategies based on certain technical analysis patterns yield returns that significantly exceed results of unconditional trading strategies.     

Managing and Adapting Practice: A System for Applying Evidence in Clinical Care with Youth and Families

Concerns about the gap between service quality in mental health systems and the growing literature on scientifically tested treatment approaches has led to multiple policy and practice initiatives calling for greater use of empirically supported interventions (ESIs) in children’s mental health systems. Despite the demonstrated efficacy of these approaches, some concerns remain about the current suitability of ESIs as a single strategy for improving service system quality. Issues raised include (a) the appropriateness of some interventions for individualized care or adaptation in response to emergent events, and (b) the ability for ESIs collectively to yield a comprehensive service array for youth and families. The current paper thus outlines one strategy to complement and extend that work, through a system for organizing and coordinating currently available ESIs as well as for building and adjusting individualized, evidence-informed plans when needed, using dedicated tools to inform treatment design, adaptation, and evaluation in real time. A case example is presented, and implications for treatment and research are discussed.     

Citizenship,Civic Engagement and Property Ownership

In this paper we examine the relationship between citizenship, civic engagement and property ownership in Australia. We draw upon nationally representative survey data to examine this relationship by focusing upon empirically accessible issues. We examine the civic implications of different housing tenures, or what Troy (2000) refers to as the level of ‘citizen competence‘, and the tension between (private) ownership and (public) engagement in terms of membership and participation in a range of clubs and organisations. Lower levels of participation in charitable organisations among mortgage holders compared to people in other housing tenures questions the link between home buying (that is equated with private ownership), and a strengthening of community life. However, low participation rates in a clubs and organisations by public tenants, indicates that levels of social exclusion are higher in ‘residual’ public housing communities.     

Open-Set Nearest Shrunken Centroid Classification

Nearest Shrunken Centroid (NSC) classification has proven successful in ultra-high-dimensional classification problems involving thousands of features measured on relatively few individuals, such as in the analysis of DNA microarrays. The method requires the set of candidate classes to be closed. However, open-set classification is essential in many other applications including speaker identification, facial recognition, and authorship attribution. The authors review closed-set NSC classification, and then propose a diagnostic for whether open-set classification is needed. The diagnostic involves graphical and statistical comparison of posterior predictions of the test vectors to the observed test vectors. The authors propose a simple modification to NSC that allows the set of classes to be open. The open-set modification posits an unobserved class with a distribution of features just barely consistent with the test sample. A tuning constant reflects the combined considerations of power, specificity, multiplicity, number of features, and sample size. The authors illustrate and investigate properties of the diagnostic test and open-set NSC classification procedure using several example data sets. The diagnostic and the open-set NSC procedures are shown to be useful for identifying vectors that are not consistent with any of the candidate classes.