A Recommender System for fund raising management

In fund raising management the use of rigorous mathematical methods and decision support systems has been playing a more and more important role. These techniques develop the classical data base approach proposed by the operational literature. These improvements concern both the mathematical modeling associated with the information management techniques and the specic characteristics of the Associations, with the consequent specializations of the algorithms. In this approach, the role of the potential donors (i.e. contacts) and the process for turning the contacts into actual donors in the context of the so called "giving pyramid" was poorly investigated, despite its high importance in particular from a strategic point of view. In this contribution, we develop a recommender system that uses similarity measures to optimize the contacts' management. This is achieved by a proper use of the information contained in the Association data base, which concern the profiles of those donors that are suitable for the current campaign, and by matching these with the profiles of the contacts by similarity. The similarity among the (normalized) profiles will be realized by a suitable distance-based function. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach

A divide-and-conquer strategy using feature relevance and expert knowledge for enhancing a data mining approach to bank telemarketing

The discovery of knowledge through data mining provides a valuable asset for addressing decision making problems. Although a list of features may characterize a problem, it is often the case that a subset of those features may influence more a certain group of events constituting a sub-problem within the original problem. We propose a divide-and-conquer strategy for data mining using both the data-based sensitivity analysis for extracting feature relevance and expert evaluation for splitting the problem of characterizing telemarketing contacts to sell bank deposits. As a result, the call direction (inbound/outbound) was considered the most suitable candidate feature. The inbound telemarketing sub-problem re-evaluation led to a large increase in targeting performance, confirming the benefits of such approach and considering the importance of telemarketing for business, in particular in bank marketing

Influence of artificial intelligence on public employment and its impact on politics: A systematic literature review

Goal:Public administration is constantly changing in response to new challenges, including the implementation of new technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). This new dynamic has caught the attention of political leaders who are finding ways to restrain or regulate AI in public services, but also of scholars who are raising legitimate concerns about its impacts on public employment. In light of the above, the aim of this research is to analyze the influence of AI on public employment and the ways politics are reacting. Design / Methodology / Approach: We have performed a systematic literature review to disclose the state-of-the-art and to find new avenues for future research. Results: The results indicate that public services require four kinds of intelligence – mechanical, analytical, intuitive, and empathetic – albeit, with much less expression than in private services. Limitations of the investigation: This systematic review provides a snapshot of the influence of AI on public employment. Thus, our research does not cover the whole body of knowledge, but it presents a holistic understanding of the phenomenon. Practical implications: As private companies are typically more advanced in the implementation of AI technologies, the for-profit sector may provide significant contributions in the way states can leverage public services through the deployment of AI technologies. Originality / Value: This article highlights the need for states to create the necessary conditions to legislate and regulate key technological advances, which, in our opinion, has been done, but at a very slow pace.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Social interactions issues in group decision-making

Decision- making is certainly the most widespread of all human activities, whether individual or by a group. Some decisions, especially individual decisions, are easy to make and do not require sophisticated algorithms to arrive at a solution. Others, on the other hand, and especially in the case of group decision-making, require the establishment of frameworks, rules or algorithms of varying degrees of sophistication to arrive at a satisfactory solution. In this process, the most difficult part is certainly the modeling and treatment of the relationships between the actors in the decision-making group. The objective of this paper is therefore to build a framework for modeling and analyzing interactions between decision-makers in a group on computational bases in the sense that these interactions will be characterized by numerical parameters. The constant concern in this work is to get as close as possible to human behavior by using bipolar analysis

Labor Market Immigrant Integration and Employment: An Analysis of EU Countries

This Senior Project advances the immigrant integration debate, examining the effect of labor market immigrant integration policies on the European labor force. Building on an existing body of literature that examines the migration and immigrant integration debate, this paper assesses the relationship between immigrant integration policies in the EU and the employment rate of the total, non-EU, low-skilled, young, old, and female labour force, by using panel data at the EU level to answer the question, “Can the labor market integration of immigrants lead to positive labor market outcomes as expressed by the employment rate?”. The relationship between labor market immigrant integration policies and the employment rate, was studied both at an EU level and at an individual country level. In order to examine the disparities that exist between the labor market immigrant integration policies and labor market outcomes, a country analysis for Austria, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK was done. On the EU level, a statistically significant positive correlation was found between the total, old, and female population and labor market immigrant integration policies. For the non-EU, low-skilled, and young labor force positive results were found but with no statistical significance. On the country level, the results were also mixed. These results were not well explained by the stated hypothesis that immigrant integration policies will lead to positive labor market outcomes as measured by the employment rate

Ambiguity in asset pricing and portfolio choice: a review of the literature

A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that investors’ behavior is not well described by the traditional paradigm of (subjective) expected utility maximization under rational expectations. A literature has arisen that models agents whose choices are consistent with models that are less restrictive than the standard subjective expected utility framework. In this paper we conduct a survey of the existing literature that has explored the implications of decision-making under ambiguity for financial market outcomes, such as portfolio choice and equilibrium asset prices. We conclude that the ambiguity literature has led to a number of significant advances in our ability to rationalize empirical features of asset returns and portfolio decisions, such as the empirical failure of the two-fund separation theorem in portfolio decisions, the modest exposure to risky securities observed for a majority of investors, the home equity preference in international portfolio diversification, the excess volatility of asset returns, the equity premium and the risk-free rate puzzles, and the occurrence of trading break-downs.Capital assets pricing model ; Investments

Essays on endowment fund management

The debate around the perpetual nature of endowment funds from the perspective of current versus future obligations is a major problem that I would like to address in two ways: (i) a macro-level treatment of the simultaneous asset allocation and spending rate with subsistence levels (analogous to the habit formation concept); and (ii) a micro-level analysis of one part of the endowment portfolio with a particular emphasis on the currency hedging decision. The purpose of the third chapter is to illustrate the significance of joint determination of appropriate asset allocation and spending rate decisions, and to describe the behavior of the endowment fund portfolio under certain modeling assumptions, including a sensitivity analysis that evaluates, in particular, the relationship between the spending rate and stock allocation over an extended period of time by changing the values of certain parameters in the model. The fourth chapter tackles the issue of international diversification from the point of view of active currency hedging. The ability to control risk with the possibility of return enhancement is the main reason why institutional investors such as university endowments should worry about the international diversification of investment portfolios. I have concentrated on an area, which has been overlooked by endowment funds for a long time. That is, the introduction of currency hedging in the context of an international portfolio and the provision of some behavioral considerations: first, implicitly, in the framework of the traditional expected utility maximization and then, explicitly, in the disappointment-averse functional context. In both chapters, the discussion is heavily based on the specification of the utility function; i.e., habit formation through the use of a subsistence level in the case of asset allocation and spending rate determination, and behavioral/agency-related formulation of various aversion parameters in the international portfolio management chapter